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Chicken Pie with a Caudle

A baked chicken pie topped with a sweetened cream and wine caudle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Pie with a Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chickens

  1. Truss and season the chickens as you would pigeons.

  2. Place 1 tablespoon of butter inside each chicken and 1 tablespoon in the bottom of a baking dish.

  3. Pack the chickens neatly in the dish and place additional butter and hard-boiled egg yolks on top.

Make the pie and caudle

  1. Cover the dish with puff pastry and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 2 eggs and mix in the white wine, cream, sugar, and nutmeg until smooth.

  3. Once the pie is baked, pour the caudle mixture into the top of the pie and give it a gentle shake.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Chicken + white winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,904 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main meat, which cooks gently in the enclosed dish and stays moist.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the meat and pastry brown.
Eggs
Beaten yolks thicken the caudle custard as it sets, giving it a smooth texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the caudle, balancing the richness of the cream.
Cream
Adds fat and body, giving the caudle a smooth, rich texture.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals the chickens in the dish.

The step that matters

Pouring the caudle into the baked pie. The caudle is a liquid egg custard that sets with gentle heat. Pouring it into a baked pie leaves little heat to set it, so the custard may stay runny. A gentle shake helps it settle evenly through the pie.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, egg, white wine, cream, sugar):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, egg, white wine, cream, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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